Hepatitis B Treatment Singapore | HIV PEP
Hepatitis B Treatment in Singapore: Hepatitis B is a serious viral infection that affects the liver. It is usually a short-term infection, but may persist and cause serious health problems.
Treatment of hepatitis B
Treatment of hepatitis B is based on short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic) viral infection.
To treat acute hepatitis B, antibodies (called hepatitis B immunoglobulin) can be administered within 1-7 days of diagnosis. Hepatitis B immunoglobulin is a concentrated blood protein that fights the viral infection and helps your immune system clear out the virus.
While you are recovering from acute hepatitis B infection, it’s important to consume nutritious food and plenty of fluids and to get adequate rest. You should avoid consumption of alcohol and any drug or medication that affects the liver. This may help your body to recover from the infection more quickly. However, none of these approaches can prevent the transformation of acute hepatitis B to the chronic state. In rare instances, some individuals may require hospitalization and treatment to prevent complications, such as fulminant hepatitis B.
As of now, no effective treatments are available to cure chronic hepatitis B infection. However, there are medications that can either prevent or delay the development of complications, such as liver damage and cirrhosis. These include certain antiviral medications and immune-boosting substances, to suppress viral replication and to prevent liver damage.
Interferon is similar to an immune substance that the human body produces naturally to fight viral infections. If it’s prescribed to you, you will get interferon injections every week, until complete disappearance of the virus from your body. Interferon has multiple side effects and does not always work.
Other antiviral medications, such as entecavir, lamivudine, tenofovir and adefovir, may be prescribed to stop multiplication of the hepatitis B virus in your body. You may need to continue the treatment for many years, until the complete disappearance of the virus from your body. During the treatment, your doctor will monitor you by ordering regular blood tests, and may adjust the medications as needed.
If you develop side effects that require you to stop these medications, or if the medicine does not work well for you, liver transplantation is an alternate option. This requires organ donation from a tissue-matched donor; the donor may be living or deceased. Although the procedure is very invasive, it may be the only option to save the patient’s life. However, follow-up treatment is important to prevent reinfection and damage to the transplanted liver in chronic hepatitis B patients.